2009: European Year of Creativity and Innovation

“Imagine. Create. Innovate.”

This is the slogan which European Union has chosen to promote this New Year: the European Year of Creativity and Innovation. (Can read the European Parliament resolution here).

According to Jan Figel, the Education Commissioner, there has never been better time for Europe to be flexible.

Imagine, create and innovate is what AdWomen wants to promote and we begin the year with the biggest energy ever! In this blog every day you will find the most interesting advertising works created by/for women and the most relevant studies related to women in advertising.

Your participation is more than welcome in AdWomen. Opinions, news, works… All these together will help us approach the female side of advertising.

Happy New Creativity Year with AdWomen

Source: European Union

The sex of the brain

The interview of Eduard Punset to Louann Brizendine, neurobiologist and author of "The female brain", was very interesting. She talked about the differences between the brains of men and women.

She explained, for example, that boys and girls tend to play in a different way, independently of the culture where they live or of the education they receive. Boys normally play abrupt games and fight, while girls play fantasy games and they assign roles. So although you try to educate them with toys without sex marks, that tendency usually prevails.

Media saturate us with images that urge women to be attractive, but these circuits to express sexuality are natural in the feminine brain, especially before the ovulation. Everywhere, young girls do what they consider adequate inside its culture to attract to the opposite sex.

This open a huge discussion about the differences between men and women. If we apply that to advertising, we raise: If men and women have different brains, do they create different?

This is very useful for creatives. If we knew better how women and men think and which are their motivations, we would know better how to talk to them.

Read the complete interview: http://www.eduardpunset.es/charlascon_detalle.php?id=25

Louann Brizendine's web: http://www.louannbrizendine.com/

Women triumph in the Alternative Nobel

2008 Right Livelihood Awards honour champions of independent journalism, peace-building and social justice. These are the winners:

Amy Goodman (USA), founder and award-winning host of Democracy Now!, a daily grassroots, global tv/radio news hour, is honoured "for developing an innovative model of truly independent political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media."

Monika Hauser (Germany), gynaecologist and founder of medica mondiale, receives an Award "for her tireless commitment to working with women who have experienced the most horrific sexualised violence in some of the most dangerous countries in the world, and campaigning for them to receive social recognition and compensation."

Asha Hagi (Somalia). The Jury honours Asha Hagi "for continuing to lead at great personal risk the female participation in the peace and reconciliation process in her war-ravaged country."


Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan, and their organisation LAFTI (Land for the Tillers' Freedom) (India), who receive an Award "for two long lifetimes of work dedicated to realising in practice the Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development, for which they have been referred to as 'India's soul'."

Web de Right Livelihood Award: http://www.rightlivelihood.org/

MANIFESTO

“If the great advance in the XX century has been the incorporation of women to society, the greatest advance will be in the XXI century with the incorporation of her thinking”

Welcome women and men to Adwomen. This blog is about the role of women in advertising, women as a professional, as a consumer, as a generator of opinion or as a creator of new communication codes.

And why a blog about women as creators and receptors of advertising messages?

• Because in Cannes Festival over 70% of the categories contested are traditionally ‘female’, but 77% of the jury members are male.

• Because women buy 85% of all the stuff that is sold around the world, but the majority of women confess that they don’t feel understood by advertising.

• And because it isn’t intelligent that market pushed the main target of their business into the background.

We want to know if the tone, the codes and the creativity made by us, the women, contribute with novelties to the advertising culture.

In Adwomen, you can know the most distinguished creative women of the world, their work and their views about the role that we play in the sector. Also, you will discover all the novelties in the advertising industry related to female world: new products, strategies to differentiate, books about this topic and the latest news about the women intervention in the most important advertising festival around the world.

Adwomen is a space to debate, to know ant to promote the work of women professionals in the sector. We will show the most important creativity made by women, while we let in your hands determinate if there is a female factor in the creativity and, if there is, identify their peculiarities and differences with regard to male creativity.

Adwomen, the female side of advertising.